


Triptych

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [23]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Accidental harm, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angst, Arrest, Blackmail, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Case Fic, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cutting, Depression, Disassociation, Extortion, Falling In Love, Family, Fluff, Graphic Description, Heart-to-Heart, Horror, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Magical Trouble, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Coercion, Mental Instability, Mindfuck, Minor Injuries, Oaths & Vows, Partners to Lovers, Poisoning, Possessive Behavior, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, Protectiveness, Romance, Self-Harm, Serial Killers, Serious Injuries, Trope Bingo Round 14, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Witch Hunt, h/c_bingo Round 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24461200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: The panels slid into place in his mind’s eye almost like skin molding back together, careless stitches, a meaning that didn’t have to be quite so literal.“It’s a triptych,” Reece breathed out, tightening his grip on an uncontrollable situation.
Relationships: James Reece/Charlie Wax
Series: an unquiet mind [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1400899
Kudos: 1
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 10, Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	Triptych

**Author's Note:**

> Written for h/c_bingo [May Amnesty](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/64827.html) for the prompts: rare/small fandom, magical trouble, arrest, witch hunt and poisoning. 
> 
> Also a fill on my Trope Bingo card for [Extortion/Blackmail](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/47728.html). 
> 
> **Warnings** : AU: Hunters & Hunting, AU: Creatures & Monsters, Self Harm (Cutting), Accidental Harm to a Loved One, Disassociation, Depression, Minor & Serious Injuries, Blood Loss, Some Blood and Gore, Nervous Breakdown, Prophetic Visions & Dreams, Serial Killer (Creature), Some Minor Gruesome Descriptions, Implied Sexual Content, Mindfuck
> 
>  **Series** : an unquiet mind

The dreams rippled along his skin like gently caressing waves, pulling him in with a false sense of security before lashing out with familiar claws. They gripped tight, latching onto arteries and wrapping around fragile bones, inhaling his memories and feeding on them, twisting them into fuel for an endless fire of suffering and most of all a duty, whether eternal or not, boundlessly subjugating.

There was always somewhere suffering somewhere.

The water was thick and viscous, black as pitch and unrelentingly frigid. It was a shock to his system but nothing more; he wasn’t really there, only a viewer in this madness. As soon as he realized this, the water parted like a curtain, revealing a hell-scape strewn with mutilated bodies, half of them torn apart, all fed on, teeth clamping around Reece’s wrists and skin peeling as he pulled away…

_It’s just a vision… which means the pain’s not real, your skin isn’t broken and you aren’t bleeding and there is nothing you can do, nothing you need to do…_

Sometimes the visions wanted him to forget this though. Sometimes they kept him here as a reminder: everything he had the capacity to feel, everything it was his job to fight against and snuff out of existence, everything he could run and yet never escape from.

When he surfaced, stars like little lanterns of pure, _free_ light spilling across the eerily moonless sky so high above, when he closed his eyes and dipped back under, seeking that cold so fierce and absolute it could be mistaken for warmth, seeking further clues so he could _stop_ reliving this, it all clicked out.

The bed underneath was damp, the remnants of the icy water clinging to his hair and skin, the figure at rest and oblivious beside him not awake and not moving and therefore not really there…

And there was so _much_ underneath his skin that ached for release, screaming out in half-choked rantings of agony.

The knife was well-worn though still sharp, sharp _enough,_ caressing his trembling fingers until they stilled.

Burning his skin until the first completed incision lulled him toward something like forgetful serenity.

“Pieces of green, let me fall, let me breathe….”

Wax stirred, though it wasn’t until the pungent scent of blood hit the air that he ripped aside the covers and wrestled the knife out of Reece’s hands. He swore profusely as he turned on the lamp and once more grasped Reece’s crimson soaked, slippery hands. Reece flinched at the glow, the proof now undeniable rather than a mere feeling of being lightheaded. He couldn’t hide this weakness from Wax, couldn’t pretend his blood wasn’t flowing freely. The dreams leeched out from underneath his skin like the poison they could only be as each second trickled by…

“What the _hell,_ Reece?” It was more a shout of outrage than a question but Wax’s steely eyes brooked no room for denial or lies.

Reece could label it as disassociating and it was in a sense, in the way that he’d only been _half_ -him, except that he had been fully aware of his actions, up to the perfectly irrational knowledge that he needed to bleed it out.

Bleed out the pain and the misery and the _sin._

“I’m not a basket case,” Reece snapped. “And I’m not a suicide risk either,” he reasoned as an afterthought, bitterly regretting not sounding more convincing before it left his mouth.

Wax was dabbing at his hands until he huffed and released them, as if realizing he had better things to be doing that would actually yield results. It wasn’t long before he had Reece’s hands again, wrapping something around his wrists, bandages probably, maybe even the sheets, not that he cared and not that he bothered to look. “And just how deep were you planning on cutting? How many cuts, do you think, until I woke the hell up and realized my partner was bleeding to death in _our_ bed?”

Reece cringed. It had been foolish, but then again he hadn’t really possessed the capacity for logical thought in that moment, could no longer grasp the concept of cause and effect, of action and reaction, of the effects on your body in reality rather than what only resembled reality.

Wax was angry, Reece didn’t even have to look at him to realize that. He could feel his partner shaking on the bed, could see his shoulders vibrate and predict the lines around his mouth beginning to deepen. His hands weren’t gentle and Reece suspected that it was on purpose.

Reece, however, was angry too, angry at being interrupted and scolded, angry that Wax couldn’t understand, angry that it was all so cut and dry with him, only one course, only his way. He was angry at the kiss last night, angry he had tried to use his partner as a distraction, so furious that Wax viewed the blood staining his wrists and palms as childish rather than their teenage fumbling around last night.

“You’re going to sit there and I’m going to get someone over here. You’re going to _sit_ there, Reece.”

Reece shuddered, pulling his hands closer to his chest, cradling them there as Wax had done just moments before. “Pieces of green, feel me fall.” _It’s a sin, it’s all nothing more than a sin and there’s so much of it, too much of it that I can’t let it take over…_ “Pieces of green, feel me fall, let me breathe.”

“What?” Shouted Wax through the telephone, could just as well have been talking to Reece.

Reece wasn’t looking, couldn’t get himself to concentrate.

There wasn’t enough of him really to be here at all.

* * *

Wax was pushing him down into the mattress, hands grasping Reece’s face and tearing at Reece’s sore, still clothed shoulders and settling at Reece’s already unfastened belt. There was a tongue licking the hollow confines of his ear and claiming the patch of skin just underneath, a mouth carving a stretch of hickeys along his neck before finding Reece’s own, a mouth reeking of fire and brimstone and… candy?

Reece pushed back but barely made any headway. Wax had twenty years on him and yet had all the energy of a raging, horny bull. As soon as Reece’s resolve had snapped, his partner needed little convincing to claim every ounce of skin Reece possessed, licking and kissing and marking and semi-worshiping. He was little more than Wax’s newest meal, his latest girl, the next thing that moved that he could _fuck._

Wax grumbled the less Reece began to respond, practically pounding the younger man with his fists as he manhandled him onto his back, demanding hands bruising pale skin, shoving Reece’s head upwards for greater purchase, pushing Reece’s limbs this way and that all to his own liking until Reece was spasming and oversensitive and irritable. Why had he agreed to this? Why couldn’t Wax just leave him be? Why couldn’t he just get the hell on with it?

_Pieces of green, feel me fall, let me breathe. There is no sin more than keeping still in all the fires of our memory, keeping quiet in all our far-fetched desires._

_I am the sin, the pain, the fever. I am everything that cannot be stopped._

He arched as a meaty hand grasped liquid warmth, as the warm, wet confines of an eager mouth devoured him until he was a fountain, until he was collapsing underneath his captor and subjected to a painful confirmation. “You are the sin, the pain, the fever. You are everything that cannot be stopped and I _will_ stop you.” And Wax continued on with his feast of Reece as if he were incapable of speech in the first place.

Reece laid spread out beneath him, past the point of self-consciousness and yet twitching in hesitation, brutally responsive to everything Wax was trying to make him feel yet with all the real emotion stubbornly kept back.

It was a distraction, nothing more.

Even though Reece’s heart had never beat so hard and so heavy in his chest before.

It was beating hard and heavy and _faster_ now as Reece slipped out of the memory’s confines, his frayed consciousness and battered body flickering into the small hospital room he was currently sharing with Wax, whose presence took up most of Reece’s breathing space.

So he breathed shallowly, tingling hands so pale they were nearly transparent nervously adjusting the sheets he was tucked under. Wax wouldn’t sit, his own stubbornness allowing him no measure of rest, and Reece’s dimmed gaze followed him as he paced the room, perfectly aware Reece was awake. The reluctant patient kept adjusting, twisting, tearing at the scratchy, medicinally white sheets, self-conscious flooding back in and desiring an outlet for his frustration when his partner’s words wouldn’t fill the ever-widening space between them.

“You’re going to pull at your stitches,” Wax finally growled.

The heat Wax was emitting was more a shimmer now than an inferno; it settled tightly over Reece like a smothering blanket, its flame-encased hands halfway to choking him. Reece craved it as much as he did the cold, _cold_ water. His blood-drained body squirmed, betraying his loss of control, increasing the gradual deterioration of the hard casing around Wax’s heart until Reece could almost hear that heartbeat vibrating next to his own, laying Wax’s true weakness bare until it stole Reece’s breath away.

Wax, having long suffered, melting down to where Reece might approach him, his hands wringing themselves to an unnecessary soreness before an arm rested above his head, not touching, just shielding Reece from the confines of his own mind. “You are going to be the death of me someday, Reece.” Wax would kiss his hands if his wrists weren’t twinging, he would pet Reece’s hair if his anger wasn’t still simmering. “I pray to whatever’s holy out there that when that day comes, you won’t be screaming or spouting nonsense or slicing open your wrists hoping it’ll take…”

 _Then so be it,_ Reece thought, rolling over onto his side and thus turning his back on his partner. The wall he put up was soundproof and fireproof and specifically _Wax_ -proof.

He stopped anyway: stopped moving, stopped inwardly cursing, wrung the worst of his own anger out until it was lukewarm, though only because the look Wax had been tormenting him with had just begun to _physically_ hurt like a thorn in his chest, even the memory of it.

* * *

The panel was etched into the concrete, sturdier than in Reece’s dreams, giving little way underneath his battered fingers…

He wasn’t used to this, to jumping in without thinking. He couldn’t _think_ now when everything depended on how quickly he grasped, how fast he acted, when _this_ laid waste to and heaped ignorance upon everything else. He couldn’t afford to wait for Wax to catch up, couldn’t allow Wax to hinder him even if in his hope to stop Reece from tearing himself apart.

“Green. Everything’s so _green_ …”

Green chalk, half a dozen variants, made into something so intricate, lines forming in Reece’s mind and finishing there without him even having to trace each and every one in real time to fuse it into his head. He’d barely broken through the concrete, carved further with his fingernails and tugged with his hands, wrists screaming at an ever-heightening pitch. Wax was a heavy weight at his shoulder and making more progress than he, grasping Reece’s upper arms until Reece realized he was satisfied and sat back on his heels, chalk-laced hands staining his jeans, the remnants of the vision finally coming to a standstill.

This was the second panel, the first carved into a caving, cauterized human back, red as a fevered night, a cacophony of screams crackling along each edge until it painted a trail of gold in Reece’s head, blistering with heat worthy of a migraine. He waited in breathless impatience until he didn’t have to physically _feel_ it anymore, the final sensation nothing less than pins snapped into precise points along his spine.

Art had led him to where he had needed to go before, so it was nothing shocking or inconvenient. Fear would lead him to strange places, though at least the visions found greater meaning and purchase outside of Reece’s crippled head.

The more he feared, the more it all came to life.

The green design was more simple: life-giving vines rippling like rolling hills shaken loose from a canvas until they careened into a blazing sun, shedding horrid light on some semblance of a human figure rising from the dirt, as if having dug a way out of its own grave. What he and Wax had been hunting for weeks now must have been resurrected: from the ashes; under a wretched, forsaken sun; crawling its way towards a victory of claimed flesh and stolen lives.

They’d found the bodies, now they just needed to find a door into the earth.

Reece suspected this wasn’t the last piece; there was a lack of finality about it. There was a strip of skin missing, the heart of the finished creation.

And he had learned to trust his instincts.

The pins encasing his spine were rusting, reeking of condemnation while he reeled in consternation. This panel brought little more to the surface, granting no further visions. Already invisible fingers attempted to pry loose those rusting, expired screws until bile surged up his throat, too sore for it to be swallowed back down. Sour tasting liquid squeezed out past his lips, pressing in on Reece’s stomach in all the horribly right places, teeth jolting from the impact, jaw stretched and stretched and throbbing a second heartbeat.

Why couldn’t Wax understand that his wrists had been nothing compared to everything else? It was the pain _he_ could inflict, the pain _he_ could control, _his own_ pain that grounded him faster and surer than any of Wax’s half-assed promises.

Reece broke out of the miasma of sickness, the rain spitting down on him just cold enough to shock him back to reality. “Black and blue…,” he rubbed suddenly at the bruises littering his exposed arms, bruises Wax had put there the night before out of lust and need and anger…

_No, not anger. Love._

_I’m not another girl, or another in a long line of partners, I’m not just another…_

Wax’s hands were chilled and expressive, soft each time they touched Reece, calm and sure and reverent. “No,” he shook his head, one hand cupping Reece’s neck and the other his cheek as the rain poured down harder, trying to flatten them down into the earth. And Wax would fall with him, there was no doubt of that now… “No, you’re Reece. All mine. All _my_ Reece.”

It would probably be the worst point in time to have a serious conversation, to disclose the things that were weighing them down, to cast out all they didn’t need to carry in this rain, trying to drown out their words, trying to force them with cold and a stinging wind and bodily fatigue out of this moment.

But Reece couldn’t leave, trapped here, particles of dirt under his bleeding fingernails, knees scraped and raw and crumbling, stomach seeped in acid and sickness. Wax, on the other hand, had every reason to run.

Reece knew he wouldn’t.

_When everything is said and done, you will be the one in need, the one on broken knees._

_And I’ll need someone to fix it… to fix me._

It was just a hint but…

This was actually the _worst_ possible time to start a relationship.

“I don’t think I’ve ever needed a shower more than I need one now,” Wax griped. His shoulders and head tilted back, embracing the rain as just another screw you to the world. “And the same goes for you, Reece cup.”

Reece smiled a wan, bitter, drained smile at the affectionate moniker. His shaking hands were clasped around his knees, fingers scrabbling at drenched jeans, a larger set of hands soon resting uninvited over them.

He stared at those hands, easier than looking at Wax head-on, stared at the thick silver band etched with initials so deep they may as well have been in blood. Those initials _hurt_ too: a sharp, lasting twinge each time his attention found, focused and lingered on them, _hurt_ as if being carved right into his skin. But this was _Wax_ and they were just a little close, a little too vulnerable, a little too exposed.

“Worst time, huh?” Wax echoed. He knew Reece’s head space _too_ well sometimes. “Maybe the _worst_ time is actually the best time, ya look at it a certain way.” Reece listened, trying not to take too much of it seriously; _that_ brought its own danger. “Truth is, you could use someone more than just at your back.”

_I could use someone dripping with me, drenched in me, breathing me, bleeding me, encased around me…_

“You could use someone right in the thick of it with you, someone to ride it all out with. My head is harder than you think it is.”

Reece shot him a playful smirk. “Thick skull, first thing I noticed.”

Wax paused, _legitimately,_ to the depths of which Reece suspected laid memories of their first fateful - or not - run-in with each other, their first case, their first cup of coffee and first decent - sit-down - meal and first can of paint swept onto the walls of their first apartment. Their first rumble on the floor, first kiss, first flirtation that wasn’t brushed aside as they struggled not to cross a line, first inkling of a lust bouncing playfully out of its once firm boundaries and into the squishy, complicated bubble of love. And then Wax pulled him in, physically _and_ mentally, not _all_ of him but as much as he could get and keep hold of. “Let’s paint this fucked up, black and blue portrait together, whaddya say?”

Reece knew it wasn’t easy, knew it shouldn’t sound so good, knew it wasn’t worth getting his hopes up for. Wax, however, could get his hopes up enough for the both of them.

* * *

Of course, Reece wasn’t to know then exactly what Wax had meant by _together._ They had started doing everything together and not just working a case: eating, sleeping, even writing their reports and cooking - the occasional night they would stay in and concoct something with all that had been building up in their fridge - and watching tacky eighties TV and Star-Trek reruns.

What Reece had never expected was for Wax to want to be a part of his visions, or how adamantly he would demand it.

Granted, Reece had pretty much gone off the deep end at that point. It was like he was a toy consistently being broken, invisible fingers pricking invisible strings, snapping parts requiring decent oxygen and blood circulation into several misshapen pieces, peppering his sense of direction with fire-laden bullets, shredding his clarity of the world until he was nearly completely cut off from it.

And all the while, the images that were snapshots of a twisted reality that wasn’t his own haunted him, sickening him down to his very marrow, trimming down the vulnerable parts of his psyche until he could feel his mouth being moved without his consent, saying words that barely registered.

“Pieces of green, feel me fall, let me breathe. There is no sin more than keeping still in all the fires of our memory, keeping quiet in all our far-fetched desires. When everything is said and done, you will be the one in need, the one on broken knees.”

Wax backhanded him, Reece’s lip and cheek erupting in searing shock. He curled in on his stomach but didn’t fall, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it in until his vision blurred. He lapped the blood away with his tongue, reality tasting more bitter than sweet, and he glanced up and inflicted a grin upon his furious partner.

He’d been waiting for Wax to make him _bleed._

“I’ve had enough of this _bullshit_!” Wax roared, hands spread wide as if mocking the very sky above them, the very world seen fit to curse them. It was a dangerous dare, the skyline erupting in thunder, the rain pounding down on their audacity, sluicing their strength away.

Save for the fire in Wax’s eyes, too hot to ever really be extinguished.

His hand grasped Reece’s throbbing cheek. “Let me _in._ ”

It was Reece who erupted then, image after image slicing through his certainty like shards of glass, dipped purposely in acid. There was no pinpointing who he was; there was no ounce of self-possession save for the inkling that someday this would end. Somehow Wax’s fists and his dangerous brand of entitled resolve would break through and reach him.

It wasn’t like he wanted to depend on Wax for anything, it was just a familiar prickling of dread - beloved, actually - along his spine before he was sucked back down into the void: visions long forgotten, cases long solved, desires long held back. Reece was driven without ample warning to his knees, opened his mouth to emit a piercing plea, pounded his fists into concrete to try to escape through the bowels of the earth.

The rain was too _real_ , sinking into his skin like sharpened points of purpose which confidently took over as his mind started to melt, his consciousness dissolving into static. He could feel metal slice into his palm, could feel it slide through skin, could feel it beg for forgiveness…

Reece lifted his head, couldn’t feel it, didn’t know what reservoir that strength had been offered up to him from, didn’t know whether Wax was still here, couldn’t really see him or feel him, only too much skin, crowding in on him suffocating him branding him betraying him, bruising him the second he was trapped back inside, blood the only release…

And then he could see the light in Wax’s eyes and it was _blinding_ , otherworldly but Reece forced himself to look, forced himself to be blinded.

This time, he wasn’t alone.

The fury was still there but it had not been reinvigorated for a spell; it was more like a snapshot that had lost its meaning the moment of its creation. The regret was smoldering as Wax rewound, flash by flash, and yet not back into a state of anger. That regret renewed with every blink, every swish of Wax’s eyelashes emitting a deeper meaning to Reece than any memory inflicted upon him.

It was only then that Reece realized the pain was centered in his wrists, his head emitting a quiet buzz before dying down altogether.

The panels slid into place in his mind’s eye almost like skin molding back together, careless stitches, a meaning that didn’t have to be quite so literal.

The red swipe of a phoenix rising from the ashes, bodies strewn in inane piles and desiccating, the key a symbol of a door that could only be opened from the inside. All this etched into human skin: a body bowed, hanging from fraying rope, edges darkened from the shadows…

The green, nature-crafted hand print of a forbidden resurrection. There were flashes of a Reece that wasn’t really Reece crawling through dirt, hands seizing from ill-use but strong enough to break through. The sun was hot but not enough to break his back. He’d been given a second chance… a second chance to set things right, to peel the world and reinvent it as he saw fit…

He would want to stay underground then, close to the earth which harbored him. He would want to hide not because he was scared but because he was…

Waiting. Biding his time. So faithful he could be slothful about it, waiting for the Sun to reveal his next victim, waiting for the Earth to provide.

Wax held up his hands and bowed his head, begging for mercy or… worshiping…?

His hands were open to Reece now, skin exposed to the worst of the darkness, red and wet and withering. And it was only in that moment that Reece realized the pain wasn’t enough: he couldn’t feel the full capacity of what he had done because he had opened it up in _Wax_.

Reece gasped like a fish pulled from water, boiling in heat and confusion and wretchedness. He let the knife slide out from his hand and drop like an anvil to the ground that should have had every right to swallow him whole.

But Wax’s chest was every bit as hard and steady as the concrete as he wrapped his arms around unresisting skin, burying his face against a muscled side, soaked hands clasping his back and dragging him closer and keeping him close, a promise that one of them, only one of them, would never ever change.

* * *

Wax didn’t speak of the blood Reece had drawn, his own _partner_ , paid it no mind even and snapped every time Reece asked if he was okay or tried to reach for his hands, set to agonize on the damage he had done.

But Wax never wanted him to agonize over anything, that was the _point._

The last time it happened, Wax had grabbed his upper arm so hard he could feel the bruise forming there. “If I’m about to pass out, _pard_ , I’ll let you know, alright?”

Reece almost opened his mouth to tell him _he_ was about to pass out, but he had been through worse than this before.

They still hadn’t found the door… the door that could only be opened from the inside.

Wax had shrugged it off and Reece envied him that. “All this cryptic shit is what’s giving me a _migraine_ , not the blood loss.” Reece sympathized, as much as he could sympathize when up to Wax demanding a way in, without any encouragement from him whatsoever, Reece was really the only one who _could_ be sympathized with. “Granted, I think we should each get a pint or two after this whole debacle, especially since there’s no guarantee you won’t lose your head again.”

 _You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to your body,_ Reece chuckled.

He realized it was yet another thing he had unintentionally said out loud when Wax glanced over at him, that mildly creeped out expression darkening his face and which Reece hated being the recipient of. “I’m not clicking out again, okay? That was the whole point with the bloodletting.” _Sometimes there’s just too much of it bottled up inside and it’s the only way… it’s the only way I can force the visions somewhat_ out.

That last word seemed to smooth his partner out, maybe because he was finally believing Reece about it having been a coherent action. “Whatever you say. Though if you _do_ feel yourself clicking out like you’re a remote or something, which would be nice since I could turn you off using my best judgment…” Reece glared at him, even though it would probably turn useful when he got too deep. “…just tap my shoulder or shout my name or kick me or something. Maybe not that last part.”

“I’ll kick you in the balls as a _last_ resort,” Reece promised.

* * *

Reece waited until they were somewhere where they could get a decent cup of coffee before he decided he had better confide in Wax.

The caffeine helped _tremendously_ ; then again, it was his only saving grace these days other than Wax. Let’s just say that the first recourse was a great deal more satisfying in some ways _because_ it had predictable, sympathetic, _non-_ confrontational effects.

He had scribbled down the second panel messily in the car with Wax occasionally glancing over at him, dismayed at his sudden artistic frenzy. Only then, when he had poured out every single detail onto the page long past his fingers aching and stiff and even bleeding sluggishly from the bandages again, had he relented and flipped back to his first sketch. He committed to the half-completed page a rougher, more simplistic depiction of the second panel next to the first.

When he was finished, a third of the page remained.

“It’s a triptych,” Reece breathed out, tightening his grip on an uncontrollable situation. He glanced up from his sketch to notice that Wax’s attention was still on the fingers he had so gingerly re-bandaged in the cafe’s bathroom minutes prior. Wax glanced away after a long spell, finding something more interesting outside the window even though there was _nothing._ “Wax, _look,_ ” he pushed the sketchbook across the table until he would _have_ to look. He stood only when he realized how Wax was stubbornly _not_ turning, though his hands immediately grasped the small round table barely durable enough to retain its balance and not tip over. It wasn’t his fault that he still didn’t quite have his feet yet.

“Sit down before you fall down!” Wax barked. Given Reece’s vision was wobbling just as dangerously as the table, he obeyed, hands grasping the backing of the chair, then the cracked leather cushion. His long-suffering partner could get pissed, sure, but even then he wasn’t apt to entirely ignore him. Even so, the order lacked most of its bite and pulled from Reece no inkling of compromise past his own self-preservation. It was probably said purely out of habit. As soon as he sat back down, the tape rewound: Wax turned away from him again, momentarily shutting him out. He rested a hand over the sketchbook, however, when Reece tried to take it back. “Just leave it there for a sec. Workin’ myself up to it.”

Reece realized then that Wax was holding something back, something about the visions, something he’d seen or some deep inner frustration at not being granted a glimpse into anything at all. “Are you okay, Wax?” It was ironic given he was currently battling a dizziness that had nothing to do with drunkenness, but he figured it was the thought that counted.

He didn’t expect Wax to say anything, didn’t expect more than a brush off but it was a testament to how much the two of them had changed and how much their partnership, relationship, neither of those encompassing exactly what it was and how much it meant even when Reece was convinced that it could never amount to enough - even when it was the song in his soul played at the highest pitch like a siren song he couldn’t scratch out an eager melody he couldn’t bleed out what might as well have been a national anthem the anthem of him bellowing out until it thrashed its way into every vein, every thought, every morsel of him just to join him and convince him that his resolve was truly his - had _evolved._

Reece would never understand how he could have gotten so entwined with _one_ person, a person you were more in tune with than yourself and yet that made you more in tune with yourself than you should have any right to be, but the visions had made him a dependent upon everything it was possible to feel, every flicker of a feeling magnified to a thousandfold, everything good and everything bad shot to front and center in his head and nearly becoming indistinguishable from one another until sometimes there wasn’t even a difference between pain and relief, the depravity of want and the basest form of need, the slightest spark of love and the dousing lightning fire of an easy kill when every kill seemed an easy kill and every spark hardly a reason to hold on.

But Wax was holding on, tooth and nail, claw and bone, blood and sweat and bearing the brunt of a hundred bloody trials, spilling blood he could no longer see but stung just as much, cost just as much. Reece knew he fought past even knowing what to fight for except for that single damning thought engraved into every pore.

_Protect your partner._

It was stupid, it was simple, it shouldn’t have been enough.

And what did Reece have to offer in return?

Nothing but his heart and his will and both of which Wax would not let alone.

Lucky him.

It was absurd to believe but he had a feeling Wax’s notions were a parallel to his own. “There was a line I wouldn’t see before.” Reece thought back through the panels in his mind’s eye, trying to grasp a glimpse of what Wax might have seen. Before he could hurt his head too much, Wax flipped the cover forward on his sketchbook, putting it from their minds and maybe even forbidding its darkness to take hold of their conversation. “We have roles, Reece, and they’re not interchangeable.”

Reece had been wrong: he couldn’t possibly see where this was going.

Other than that this wasn’t a lecture Was was preaching; it was bitter resignation more than anything else.

“I saw certain things: fire, dirt, hands that weren’t mine, wounds that weren’t mine either. I bled and raged and it just wouldn’t quit and worst of all, I didn’t belong there. That entire world was screaming at me at how I didn’t belong but even more than that… I _felt_ it in my bones, like there was something watching me, something I couldn’t turn around and see, turn around and _shoot_. I’d never been so terrified in my goddamn life and there was nothing about _any_ of it that felt like I was me. Maybe I was the victim, maybe I was you. I think I was you.”

Reece blinked.

“We _have_ to stick to our roles. I _can’t_ … I can’t be there with you.” His voice cracked and something in Reece cracked as well, more than it ever had before even though it was something he had always known. Just as one had to die alone he _was_ alone in this, in that world where not even Wax could breach. He was alone until he was released, until Wax was revealed to be the answer to the scream boiling in his throat; the answer to the emptiness in his blistered hands; the answer to every prayer Reece never even realized he had spoken, out loud or in those confines of his mind where the bloodied thorns couldn’t quite reach.

Wax was finally convinced, all the struggle squeezed out, the truth stripped naked for the two of them to grudgingly accept.

He swallowed and spoke words that were a waste, words he knew Wax would never believe. “It’s not giving up.”

“Good, because I ain’t ever giving up on you.” The words struck Reece deep in the stomach, driving the air right out of him, softening his turmoil and hardening his self-assurance with that one potent swing. He thought nostalgically of John Grady Cole, plagued by bad luck, riding alongside the souls of horses, the way he faced every conflict head-on without crying or cursing about it. ‘ _You either stick or you quit and I wouldn’t quit you I don’t care what you done._ ’

The tension didn’t fade entirely but it did turn to adrenaline in Wax’s gut and Reece knew he could feed off of it, knew that sometimes he _had_ to. “Now gimme that sketchbook and maybe I can show you a thing or two ‘bout art.”

Reece couldn’t understand it but there was always something in Wax that made him smile.

* * *

The sculpture portrayed so sloppily in the third panel - as if in a fever dream - was… morbid.

So the blades in his dreams hadn’t _only_ been tools wielded for self-infliction.

He had very nearly torn himself into pieces trying to make his way both in and out of it. The meat hooks were probably spaced so close together for a reason, Reece nearly snagging himself on one with each twist of a shoulder or tilt of his head or shift of his leg. It was probably a blessing that he was spared the sensation of feeling what it would be like to be hooked up to one.

Wax held back, not that he wasn’t interested in involving himself into whatever they had stumbled into. Reece was mostly fearful that, having seen this concoction from the tortured figure they were hunting, courtesy of his visions, he might be the only one who had any hope of surviving it. The fact that he hadn’t been snagged by one of the hooks yet - or any of the other sharp instruments it was constructed of - was probably due to instinct alone. He couldn’t explain the near complete absence of fear in any other way. As he said, the only thing he truly feared was Wax being caught up and getting himself hurt or killed in the process.

That didn’t mean Wax was _at all_ happy about it.

In fact, he was _pissed,_ continually pacing, incessantly talking as he tried to unnecessarily guide his partner through the trap. Reece heeded absolutely zero words, Wax unintentionally doing his very best to distract him from the real goal: the little pot of gold in the center of it all.

It wasn’t really a pot of gold, no, it was something far more sinister that no one in their right mind should be going after.

Then again, their jobs didn’t exactly _entail_ them being given the privilege of remaining in their sanest of minds. They had to do the stupidest, _craziest_ things imaginable - kids, don’t do this at home! better yet, don’t even think about it! - practically on a daily basis, things that even the smallest particle of common sense screamed out against.

Reece was used to it by now.

Except that maybe he had been able to ignore what was waiting for him while standing far outside of it, but within touching distance there was anything _but_ avoiding it.

A grotesque collage of human hearts and various other organs and even the remnants of limbs, some exposed down to the bone and even though Reece’s head may have been in disarray, his heart was being squeezed as if in a _vise._

“Reece.”

He shook off the horrid tendrils creeping in on him. “Trust me, Wax,” he reminded, even though it wasn’t about trusting him. It was about trusting the visions.

_There is no sin more than keeping still, than keeping quiet…_

_I’m not the only one in need._

The two layers of gloves held up as his fingers pushed into and then away from the center of the sculpture of organs and already decaying flesh. Reece cringed at the sound and the smell and the feel of _literally_ pulling flesh apart, feeling it wilt and splutter and groan and yet give way. He could hear Wax cursing not far behind, though it may as well have been miles, could hear him mumbling how he shouldn’t be doing this. Reece agreed with him, though the small ball of light he held in his palm as a reward of his persistence begged to differ.

As worried as he hadn’t been, he was still pretty relieved and grateful when he was safely out.

At least Wax had restraint enough to wait for Reece to offer him what he had found, and he eagerly handed it over with an intense stare which Wax couldn’t _not_ interpret. The small ball had been so warm it had practically burned through his gloves. Wax slipped it into a small, most likely fireproof case and grabbed Reece’s sleeve, tugging him further away from the sculpture and _especially_ the contraption which housed it.

“I’ll call one of the guys to come and deconstruct it. There’s no point having anyone else go through… _that_. Jesus, Reece, there could’ve been a fucking _bomb_ in that thing.”

There wasn’t and Reece had known it all along, had known also that Wax was perfectly aware. Wax just liked to talk sometimes, idle chatter, just to fill the silence as if more words eased the tension, eased the fear, eased the fact that they were risking their lives in some way, it seemed, every second. Or maybe it was just the one complaint Wax would never actively voice, real enough as it was: Reece was the one doing _much_ more of the life risking, primarily because of the visions.

Okay, _one-hundred percent_ because of the visions.

“You’re sure you haven’t knicked yourself, right?”

Reece was more coherent than he’d been in days, which made the final sketch easier. Wax didn’t seem to get it and Reece didn’t have time to explain, which was why he immediately captured the hell-given artistic display on paper before it was carefully dismantled. “I’m _fine_ , Wax,” he insisted when said nosy - okay, protective - partner was standing at his shoulder, breathing just a bit too loudly for him to concentrate.

“Just checking.”

* * *

Truth is, he _had_ nicked himself: just a small slice on his upper right arm.

In the grand scheme of things it didn’t much matter, but try telling that to Wax if Reece should have been fool enough to reveal it and set them back even further. It twinged uncomfortably every time he moved his arm; then again, so did his wrists and his hands and even his feet, which had taken a beating from prolonged everyday activities as mundane as _walking._

At least he was sitting now, though the heavy, thousand-page or so hardback book was somewhat hard to manage in their confined space. Still, Reece was getting used to cramped conditions and they hardly seemed to phase Wax.

Having found what he suspected they were hunting, comforted that it was no longer a nameless, faceless enemy, Reece quickly flipped the book shut, almost careless enough to tear the page in the process. “If I’m right about what we’re after, it goes by more than one name.”

“Like…?”

“The Cursed One. The Harbinger of Light. This thing is _ancient_ , Wax. It’s heavily scarred, even mutilated and in some variations it has the ability to bewitch its victims if magic can serve a purpose.”

The ball of light no larger than the center of Reece’s palm: an unstable token of its power.

“What, you mean this thing is an actual _witch_?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty vague, all of it really, what it looks like and everything it can use at its disposal. It’s also called The Unknown, so I guess that fits.” Wax snorted, fingers rapping impatiently on the steering wheel. “But I don’t actually think it has telekinesis or healing capabilities or anything like that. If I had to guess,” Reece sighed, _hating_ having to guess. “I’d say it’s something like an infatuation enchantment. Old magic, _powerful_ magic. It lures its victims in with a word or an implanted thought, creates this breeding ground of overwhelming curiosity alone and they follow, their mind shutting down, no fear, no reservations.”

“It’s like snagging a fish on a goddamn hook.” Reece started to feel uneasy because the visions would put words in his head too, notions that were often indistinguishable from being his or someone else’s. Wax was watching him carefully when he spoke again. “Any weaknesses?”

 _That’s it. Its weakness is the only important thing now._ “I keep coming across repeated mentions of ram’s blood soaked in sunlight.” It was far from the oddest item they’ve had to get hold of - Reece longingly recalled his pre-Wax days when the weapons were relatively tame - but it always surprised him when Wax was creeped out by blood because hey, maiming and killing were pretty much the first qualifications in Charlie Wax’s resume.

“How do you soak something in sunlight?”

“I think it just means to kill the ram and take its blood in the daytime.” That is, if their lives ever turned out easy.

Wax was always spot-on with the inane, filler commentary. “Not on a dreary ass day, I would think.”

Reece bit his tongue but regretted just not rolling his eyes instead. Okay, so Wax was right, London wasn’t always the sunniest of places and especially hadn’t been lately, but there was bound to be adequate sunshine at _some_ point. Still, maybe _any_ bit of sun would do. “I don’t know. Sometimes these things are more figurative than literal, but not always.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t this thing sorta like sunlight? Or, at least, it seems sunlight likes _it.”_ Reece should have _known_ something was eating at him judging from even the little bit he earlier admitted he’d seen. He knew what Wax had seen in the vision because he had seen it too, or felt it: it was more a feeling than a fact.

_The Harbinger of Light._

“Again, I don’t know, Wax. I’m in the dark until I’m not.” Which was fine with Wax, he was just throwing things out there so that they could work it out for themselves and Reece forgot that sometimes. He forgot that it wasn’t all on him.

_Harbinger of Light… sunlight… the heat it extended to burn and to resurrect… the shadow it provided… how warmth could make just about anything grow, how the glare could be blinding enough to hide what should never be seen, to hide what just had to be seen for the remainder of the world to endure…_

“You’re okay, Reece cup.”

His head was resting against the dashboard and he tried to lift it but the wooziness that had been barely apparent before transformed into nausea and a bleak bordering on menacing migraine… and Wax’s hand was planted firmly on the back of his neck. “Just chill.” He was pulling back his jacket, exposing the cut on his arm he had tried to hide and as soon as it was paid attention to, the pain centered in this one area alone: red, inflamed, skin parting and opening up like a fleshy flower. Reece shivered.

“Think ram’s blood’s the cure for this too?”

He blacked out for a bit and the next thing he was aware of was Wax’s bloody mouth, lips and teeth and gums, wincing as if he’d been burned before he spit into an empty water bottle and sealed the cap back on. “It’s okay, Reece. It’s just blood loss now. Just rest and hope to hell that’ll replenish some of it.”

A long beat passed, Reece repeatedly forced away from the surface until he collapsed on something solid.

He lifted his head that felt just as heavy and detrimentally dangerous as a cannonball and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, waiting for his sight to hopefully fade past a blinding, anxiety-inducing white. “Did I pass out again?” He put faith in the sound of his own voice as being a good enough sign that he was relatively intact.

Wax was blessedly still within speaking _and_ reaching distance; he could feel a hand squeezing the underside of his arm. Reece was touched on two counts: Wax reaching out and then pulling away. He shouldn’t have been surprised since Wax was used to it all by this point, about Reece needing just enough touch to anchor him to this world but not enough to ripple along his skin like lightning until he was barely tethered to any substantial, solid thing.

It was as if the visions would just allow that small bit of comfort and no more.

Still, if Reece wrapped his head around the fleeting memory of the warmth of Wax’s palm, the way his broad fingers curled to wrap ever so slightly around his arm as if all he had to do to claim possession was one squeeze, one pulse to echo Reece’s thundering own, one touch enough to hold all that Wax was, his strength that immense, his will so indomitable, enough to fill all the years…

“…what we needed.”

“’What?”

His fingers fumbled to unlatch the seatbelt and found what felt like Wax’s knee and he dug them in like he had every right to _want_ what he sometimes felt was so much _there_ and yet so much out of his control.

“I said I got what we needed…”

 _Was I seriously passed out for_ that _long?_

Okay, so he could _not_ handle conversation and lack of proper human function right now. “I can’t fucking _see_ , Wax. Just give me a minute.”

“Yeah, I know,” Wax responded. A hand rested loosely over Reece’s as if wondering how likely it would be for his partner to tear his kneecap off. “Figured that’s why you were squinting. See anything useful?”

Reece seethed with a newfound burst of irritation. “I can’t multitask when I’m having a vision.” Meaning he wouldn’t currently be talking to Wax right now if he was having one and - despite Wax’s often inane comments and questions - he’d _much_ rather be talking to Wax right now.

The hold tightened on his hand but Wax must have ultimately decided to let him be. Maybe because Reece had enough control to be talking and to be angry and maybe to Wax that _was_ the real him.

Reece opened his mouth to say that it was starting to come back: actual colors, the vague outline of Wax’s face, but then the entire vehicle rocked and he remembered that they were in fact in a vehicle, the seatbelt apparently not having given it away and Reece would have screamed aloud at the pain clamping around his heart if he hadn’t been able to bite down on his now free hands as just another fucked up coping mechanism.

Wax, luckily, wasn’t there to stop him.

Having shut down an attempt by the visions to forcefully make him disassociate, Reece fumbled for the door handle and tumbled out into Wax’s war zone. Still dizzy from what he suspected was _mostly_ blood loss, the demand for him to catch more than mere flashes of the action was just too much. He could hear his partner bellowing: “You wanna get in on this at any point?” - but it wasn’t in Reece’s power to do more than collapse back against the passenger side door, palms slamming into heated metal, scalding them, reminding him…

He practically fell on their assailant, dragging them both down to the ground and in Reece’s perception they never did quite stop falling. His seared hands like _raw_ , throbbing meat, blood oozing out from in-between all the cracks he couldn’t see, grasped a screeching throat, squeezing squeezing _squeezing_ every ounce of his own life into snuffing out this one corrupted soul.

Something like paint exploded over him, soaking through him and down into what he could not see clearly but was only made tangible from touch alone, a touch that Wax had scarcely been able to offer him, a touch that was Reece’s only true weapon.

He clamped down on skin and muscle and sinew and bone and there was an explosion of light and of heat and of noise and Reece shut his eyes as tightly as he could, and when it was over he dropped and there was nothing… nothing but an emptiness somehow more threatening than life-affirming.

That was how every vision seemed to work: only the barest twinge of closure available to him.

Scarcely enough to feed from.

His vision finally, mercifully, cleared only to reveal a paint can reeking of blood, a ram carved into the flimsy metal. It was scary sometimes, the risks Wax took and the fact that they _always_ seemed to pay off. Maybe Reece was only alive at this point because Wax was the luckiest bastard on the planet whom fortune always smiled upon. “It’s not ram’s blood is it?”

Wax offered him a hand which he didn’t take, pushing himself back against the nearest tire instead.

“You _did_ say it’s not always literal, honeybug.”

“I don’t mind you risking my life because you’re my partner but seriously, just because…,” he swallowed, desiring nothing more than a blood transfusion at this point if it would get him just two inches closer to a relatively okay state.

“What?” Wax had followed him, kicking his boot as if Reece didn’t realize he was sprawled on the ground practically hugging a tire; yes, Reece knew _full well_ where he currently was and it wasn’t the oddest place he’d ended up.

Reece rested his forehead against the smooth, surprisingly cool rubber. “Never mind.”

The voice was fading now, the mantra, the poem seared into his consciousness inflicting him with a supposed meaning that was more pain than comfort.

_Pieces of green, feel me fall, let me breathe. There is no sin more than keeping still in all the fires of our memory, keeping quiet in all our far-fetched desires. When everything is said and done, you will be the one in need, the one on broken knees. And when you are broken, you will find that you are free._

Reece felt that somewhat, _free_ , whether from blood loss or the vision releasing him or Wax’s acceptance of the fact that his partner was broken - that he couldn’t intervene and offer accompanying body parts to shatter on repeated impact - but especially that he wouldn’t stay that way.

Wax pulled him away from the tire, which Reece suspected had left an imprint on his cheek -

Staying with Reece, grounding him, acting like everything was relatively normal, _that_ was Wax’s biggest _fuck you_ to the visions.

\- judging from how Wax swiped a thumb over the slowly cooling skin.

And it hurt so _so_ freaking _good._

* * *

He was three-quarters of the way through the smoothie when Wax told him to ease up some, but he’d already been through the two he’d gotten for himself and was eyeing Reece’s second also. In response, Reece grasped the plastic lid awkwardly and dragged it closer. It looked like strawberry banana and it smelled even better. He sipped even faster at the odd chocolate, peanut butter and banana concoction he blearily wondered whether Wax had wanted him to suffer over.

“Looks like we’re blood buddies again.” Wax tapped at his IV line and was ignored, Reece purposely avoiding his own line. He also refrained from pointing out how they weren’t currently sharing blood since they _both_ had lost more than enough of it over the last few days. Besides, plenty of Wax’s blood coursed through his veins already and vice versa.

Wax always picked the strangest moments to point out the obvious.

He was even sharing the small twin bed Reece was currently confined to even though he had his own perfectly good one not even three feet away.

“Any excuse for smoothies is a good one. Who knew fruit juice replenishes blood?”

Reece never did get started on that second smoothie, folding himself over his first as his throbbing eyes forced themselves shut. His hand curled around the plastic cup but let it go when Wax opted to take it instead. “Bedtime, huh?”

He flopped back onto the bed like a rag-doll when Wax pulled him away from the tray, the pillow nothing less than a silken cloud under his battered head. Wax went with him, legs stretching themselves out over his own, a distinct Wax-shaped, Wax-scented blanket… “Have to admit, those smoothies are pretty damn good but I’m more of an ice cream guy myself. Rocky Road, if I had to pick.” Reece already knew all this; you didn’t share a tiny apartment with someone who practically lived for food and _not_ know this. _Rocky Road sounds good… I could go for Rocky Road…_ He tucked his head against Wax’s shoulder in a plea for him to shut up although he droned on anyway, Reece dazedly considering whether he knew Wax well enough to know that’s exactly the effect his words would have.

Yeah, he settled on, he just might have.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

>  _Extort: to compel (something) of a person or thing_ : in this piece it’s two-fold as Reece’s visions serve as both poisoner of and a presence that compels Reece himself, one that absolutely subdues and drives him toward a singular minded purpose; and Wax is the one arresting (or attempting to) the visions from Reece’s unfortunate sole responsibility, demanding sight from them and from Reece. 
> 
> I don’t even know where the hell this came from; it’s kind of a mindfuck, I guess. I was listening to the Anti Nightcore version of Lana Del Ray’s ‘Serial Killer’ on repeat and also Paradise Lost’s ‘Darker Thoughts,’ so those likely put me in the right, twisted head-space for this.
> 
> Also, the reference to John Grady Cole and the quote thereafter is from Cormac McCarthy’s novel _All the Pretty Horses_. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
